India: Huge jump in cotton export

EXPORTS OF not just cotton yarn, but readymade garments also have witnessed exponential growth during April 2011-February 2012 in comparison to its corresponding period.

Industry estimates that while cotton yarn exports grew by almost 15-20 per cent in Q3 of FY2012, ready made garments (RMG) exports witnessed growth of 24 per cent to Rs 57,936 crore during this period. RMG has reported volatile behavior in the exports in line with the total textile exports.

So far India is the largest exporter of cotton yarn and the third largest RMG exporter, said DL Sharma, Executive Director, Vardhman Mills Ltd. “While last fiscal, country’s total cotton yarn exports was around 720 million kg, this fiscal by February India exported more than 750 million kg. We expect to cross 800 million kg mark this fiscal when it comes to cotton yarn exports,” he informed.

“China is our major buyer of cotton yarn followed by Bangladesh, Pakistan and other Asian countries,” he said. Sharma added that domestic consumption of cotton yarn has been stagnant this year and no such year on year basis growth was witnessed.

DK Nair, Secretary General, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) informed that due to its good quality and being price competitive, Indian cotton yarn is in good demand in overseas market.

“However, due to lack of demand in domestic sector cotton yarn production has come down by 15 per cent and fabric production is down by 19 per cent in the April-October, 2011 period over the previous year,” he added.

The Indian Apparel industry is export competitive, due to lower production cost and abundant raw material base. Exports of textile industry have revived from a negative growth of 0.5 per cent in FY08 to 17.7 per cent in FY09, 3.7 per cent in FY10 and 13.3 per cent in FY11.

RMG exports saw growth of 24% to Rs 57,936cr during April 2011-Feb 2012

“RMG exports have grown by almost 24 per cent to Rs 57,936 crore in the first three quarters of 2011-12 vis-à-vis its corresponding period. We feel that it’s a value driven growth as dollar has been quite strong than rupee this fiscal. We are yet to get reports from DGFT in regard to volume exports,” said Chandrima Chatterjee, director, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC).

Sri Lanka continued to be the leading market with a share of 14 per cent followed by the United States (10.36 per cent) and Bangladesh (6.74 per cent).

Other leading markets are UAE, Italy , Senegal, Turkey, Togo, UK and Sudan.

The US continued to be the leading market with a share of 47 per cent in the case of Cotton Made ups followed by Germany with (7.78 per cent) and the UK (7.57 per cent).